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Movie Review
Loving, and Maybe Exploiting, Armenia
Braden King's `Here' Raises Questions of Philosophy
NYT Critics' PickThis movie has been designated a Critics' Pick by the
film reviewers of The New York Times. Strand Releasing
Lubna Azabal and Ben Foster, as lovers and antagonists in Braden King's `Here.'
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 12, 2012 Recommend
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/movies/braden-kings-here-raises-questions-of-philosophy.html
There are vistas in Braden King's metaphysical road movie, `Here,'
that are so beautiful you want to step through the screen and
disappear into the Armenian landscape where much of it was filmed. In
the most evocative scene, the camera slowly pans across pastures
framed by distant mountains in which cattle graze amid a sprawling
grid of power lines.
More About This Movie
OverviewTickets & ShowtimesNew York Times ReviewCast, Credits &
AwardsReaders' Reviews In another startling juxtaposition of pastoral
and technological images, a traveler in Armenia uses a Google map to
go from outer space to the heart of San Francisco in seconds. What
does it imply that nowadays you can bask in an Armenian field and
visit an American city at exactly the same moment? The trains of
thought stirred up by the film's contemplation of what is here and
what is there - and where you are - are endless and stimulating. And
the movie is embellished with spectacularly beautiful, enigmatic
bursts of abstract imagery.
More problematic is an intermittent narrator (Peter Coyote) who
meditates in poetic language on the conflicting aesthetics of science
and exploration and on the notion that `truth is conjecture.' If what
he says is helpful in deciphering the film's aesthetics, it also
sounds grandiose. And as the movie advances, you discover that the
ideas voiced by the narrator are embedded in scenes that need no
further explication. This is a film that begins with a printed
announcement: `The story is asleep. It dreams.' Whatever that means.
The scientist and the artistic explorer are embodied by Ben Foster
(`The Messenger') and Lubna Azabal (`Incendies'), an attractive couple
with chemistry. Mr. Foster plays Will, an American satellite-mapping
engineer whose job is to match objects on the ground to satellite
photos. Ms. Azabal's character, Gadarine, is an Armenian expatriate
photographer who has returned to her homeland from abroad following a
successful Paris exhibition of her Polaroid snapshots.
After they meet by chance in a restaurant where she translates his
breakfast order into Armenian, Gadarine becomes Will's traveling
companion on a quest to photograph the rapidly changing country that
she left behind. She also serves as Will's de facto interpreter, and
the two become lovers.
Both are searchers, she for her past, he for the future. Remembering
his childhood growing up in a Northern California vineyard, Will
recalls taking long walks in which he tried to get lost. `I wanted to
find the edge of the world,' he says.
In a toast while drinking homemade vodka with some locals, he is
saluted for creating maps that `bring wisdom to the world.' But do
they? And is wisdom the right word? Gadarine, upon returning to her
peasant family, is treated as a prodigal daughter who is wasting her
life by not settling down and doing `real' work.
With its layers of weighted dialogue, `Here' has a lot in common with
Abbas Kiarostami's `Certified Copy,' a film whose intellectual
superstructure didn't preclude the emergence of vivid, quirky
personalities. The same can't be said of `Here,' where the ideas are
more implied than stated, and Will and Gadarine never completely break
out of their symbolic shells.
They ultimately clash, when Gadarine accuses Will of skimming the
surface of the world while gathering geographic data that will be used
for corporate exploitation of Armenian resources. In her pictures she
is trying to preserve the moment and the sense of place that his work
is helping to erase.
`Here,' to its detriment, never builds its ideas into a cohesive
vision. The screenplay by Mr. King and Dani Valent too often wanders
off into poetic vagueness. But visually, `Here,' filmed by Lol
Crowley, is still a stunner. Flawed as it is, I admire it immensely.
Here
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Braden King; written by Mr. King and Dani Valent; director
of photography, Lol Crowley; edited by David Barker, Andrew Hafitz and
Paul Zucker; music by Michael Krassner; production design by Richard
A. Wright; costumes by Amanda Ford; produced by Lars Knudsen and Jay
Van Hoy; released by Strand Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue
of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and
Armenian, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.
This film is not rated.
WITH: Ben Foster (Will Shepard) and Lubna Azabal (Gadarine Najarian).
Loving, and Maybe Exploiting, Armenia
Braden King's `Here' Raises Questions of Philosophy
NYT Critics' PickThis movie has been designated a Critics' Pick by the
film reviewers of The New York Times. Strand Releasing
Lubna Azabal and Ben Foster, as lovers and antagonists in Braden King's `Here.'
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: April 12, 2012 Recommend
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/movies/braden-kings-here-raises-questions-of-philosophy.html
There are vistas in Braden King's metaphysical road movie, `Here,'
that are so beautiful you want to step through the screen and
disappear into the Armenian landscape where much of it was filmed. In
the most evocative scene, the camera slowly pans across pastures
framed by distant mountains in which cattle graze amid a sprawling
grid of power lines.
More About This Movie
OverviewTickets & ShowtimesNew York Times ReviewCast, Credits &
AwardsReaders' Reviews In another startling juxtaposition of pastoral
and technological images, a traveler in Armenia uses a Google map to
go from outer space to the heart of San Francisco in seconds. What
does it imply that nowadays you can bask in an Armenian field and
visit an American city at exactly the same moment? The trains of
thought stirred up by the film's contemplation of what is here and
what is there - and where you are - are endless and stimulating. And
the movie is embellished with spectacularly beautiful, enigmatic
bursts of abstract imagery.
More problematic is an intermittent narrator (Peter Coyote) who
meditates in poetic language on the conflicting aesthetics of science
and exploration and on the notion that `truth is conjecture.' If what
he says is helpful in deciphering the film's aesthetics, it also
sounds grandiose. And as the movie advances, you discover that the
ideas voiced by the narrator are embedded in scenes that need no
further explication. This is a film that begins with a printed
announcement: `The story is asleep. It dreams.' Whatever that means.
The scientist and the artistic explorer are embodied by Ben Foster
(`The Messenger') and Lubna Azabal (`Incendies'), an attractive couple
with chemistry. Mr. Foster plays Will, an American satellite-mapping
engineer whose job is to match objects on the ground to satellite
photos. Ms. Azabal's character, Gadarine, is an Armenian expatriate
photographer who has returned to her homeland from abroad following a
successful Paris exhibition of her Polaroid snapshots.
After they meet by chance in a restaurant where she translates his
breakfast order into Armenian, Gadarine becomes Will's traveling
companion on a quest to photograph the rapidly changing country that
she left behind. She also serves as Will's de facto interpreter, and
the two become lovers.
Both are searchers, she for her past, he for the future. Remembering
his childhood growing up in a Northern California vineyard, Will
recalls taking long walks in which he tried to get lost. `I wanted to
find the edge of the world,' he says.
In a toast while drinking homemade vodka with some locals, he is
saluted for creating maps that `bring wisdom to the world.' But do
they? And is wisdom the right word? Gadarine, upon returning to her
peasant family, is treated as a prodigal daughter who is wasting her
life by not settling down and doing `real' work.
With its layers of weighted dialogue, `Here' has a lot in common with
Abbas Kiarostami's `Certified Copy,' a film whose intellectual
superstructure didn't preclude the emergence of vivid, quirky
personalities. The same can't be said of `Here,' where the ideas are
more implied than stated, and Will and Gadarine never completely break
out of their symbolic shells.
They ultimately clash, when Gadarine accuses Will of skimming the
surface of the world while gathering geographic data that will be used
for corporate exploitation of Armenian resources. In her pictures she
is trying to preserve the moment and the sense of place that his work
is helping to erase.
`Here,' to its detriment, never builds its ideas into a cohesive
vision. The screenplay by Mr. King and Dani Valent too often wanders
off into poetic vagueness. But visually, `Here,' filmed by Lol
Crowley, is still a stunner. Flawed as it is, I admire it immensely.
Here
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Braden King; written by Mr. King and Dani Valent; director
of photography, Lol Crowley; edited by David Barker, Andrew Hafitz and
Paul Zucker; music by Michael Krassner; production design by Richard
A. Wright; costumes by Amanda Ford; produced by Lars Knudsen and Jay
Van Hoy; released by Strand Releasing. At the IFC Center, 323 Avenue
of the Americas, at Third Street, Greenwich Village. In English and
Armenian, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes.
This film is not rated.
WITH: Ben Foster (Will Shepard) and Lubna Azabal (Gadarine Najarian).